Notes about Recipes in this book

• Sticky rice with ginger sausage, herb salad, and poached eggs

  • puddlemere on December 30, 2018

    This is in the breakfast section, but it's equally good for dinner, and pretty simple. The herb salad especially (I used mint and cilantro) adds a really nice fresh flavor.

• Crispy vermicelli cakes with the works

  • puddlemere on April 10, 2019

    A bit fiddly with the two cooking methods for the noodles--I'm not sure if that's really necessary, but they were crispy and delicious. I'm not sure if I liked the egg with it though. I might go with a vegetable instead next time.

• Homemade granola with yogurt, ginger, and palm sugar syrup

  • puddlemere on January 02, 2019

    I've never made granola with steel cut oats before, but I liked the built-in crunchiness. I love ginger so I added some extra crystallized ginger, and I used almonds instead of macadamia nuts because I had a bunch of them to use up. Extra good with the palm sugar syrup, although the granola is good without it as well.

  • radishseed on June 16, 2021

    I like the crunch from the steel-cut oats, the gingery palm-sugar syrup, and the fresh hit of mint, but the granola itself is a bit greasy. Too much butter?

• Spicy lamb dan dan noodles with Thai chile and mint

  • puddlemere on March 17, 2019

    I think I oversalted my stock, so that the end result of the sauce was a bit too salty. Otherwise, I really liked this--very intense flavor, and I love the herb salad on top. I used dry Chinese egg noodles rather than making my own, and served with a cucumber salad.

• Drunken noodles with chicken sausage and peanuts

  • puddlemere on January 15, 2019

    So good. We had to make a few substitutions for things we couldn't find: a Hungarian hot pepper for the Thai bird's eye chili and Fresno chilis, more shiitakes for the oyster mushrooms, regular pad Thai rice noodles for the XL rice noodles, and regular basil for the Thai basil. Even so, it was delicious! Ended up with the perfect amount of spiciness. I did soak the rice noodles for longer than 5 minutes, probably more like 10-15 to get them to soften up enough.

• Vietnamese yellow curry with mussels and chicken meatballs

  • puddlemere on January 07, 2019

    Very good. I used some leftover chicken pho broth that I had frozen and supplemented it with regular chicken stock. I halved the recipe and still got three generous servings out of it, although next time I may use a bit less stock, as I wanted it to be a little thicker. Also substituted ground turkey for the chicken and butternut squash for the kohlrabi, and left out the mussels altogether. Served with rice.

• Pineapple tarte Tatin

  • puddlemere on February 17, 2019

    This was an interesting spin on a tarte Tatin, especially served with the star anise caramel sauce and ginger ice cream. I was skeptical that all of the pineapple was going to fit in the 8-inch pan, but it all did except for one small piece. I did have to brown the pineapple in more than two batches though. I thought the butter might have browned too much in the beginning so that it would taste burnt by the end, but it was just right.

• Star anise caramel sauce

  • puddlemere on February 17, 2019

    Very quick and simple. I didn't want it to have too much of a star anise flavor so I didn't let it sit in the sauce for as long as it called for, and ended up probably going too far in the other direction--didn't have much star anise flavor at all.

• Spicy ginger ice cream

  • puddlemere on January 13, 2019

    Delicious! I love ice cream that's so dense it's almost chewy, and this is perfect. Love the ginger flavor, might be good with chopped crystallized ginger mixed in.

• Vanilla macarons with vanilla bean buttercream

  • puddlemere on December 30, 2018

    The ingredient ratios here seemed to work well, but I'm not sure about the method. My first attempt at these turned out with cracked tops, and from what I read this is due to overbeating/too much air in the batter. Next time I won't beat the egg whites quite to stiff peaks, and I'll add the macronnage step of removing some of the air. I also let the macaron shells rest for about 30 minutes after piping and before baking, and I added orange zest and food coloring to make an orange creamsicle flavor. This was the first time I've tried Swiss buttercream and it mostly turned out well, except I think next time I should beat the egg whites more and let the butter get a little bit warmer before adding.

• Everyday Annie

  Many of the recipes have multiple components and what appear to be long ingredient lists, but I think once you actually take the time to try them, they aren’t nearly as complicated as they might seem.

  Full review